[beaeglebeach]

2A arguably protects anything from steak knives to nukes, despite what tyrants in power say.

People owned warships, cannons, etc privately at that time it was written. If people shouldn't have arms such as nukes or f-15 and 'scaled up weapons' the 2A should be amended to exclude some arms.

[mindslight]

Sure, I've made this argument myself. I don't see its relevance to what I've said here.

[beaeglebeach]

The relevance is neither the historical basis nor text restricts 2A to small arms, so why are we restricting the conversation to precisely their effectiveness?

>>...2A...

> But small arms in the context of modern government technological authoritarianism amounts to little more than a security blanket ...

[mindslight]

I didn't mean to direct focus onto just small arms. The same dynamic applies with explosives, cannons, fighter jets, etc. For example, does having a ready-to-go tank in your back yard eliminate the problems with not getting a building permit?

The point is that focusing on weapons is futile when society is no longer ordered by overt force but rather economic/pragmatic attractors. In the western world the battle based on physical force has essentially been fought and won permanently - the result is democracy which is a similar dynamic without most of the violence. If a critical mass of people come together and want to change things, then that happens. The system has responded by dividing people into tribes and diverting them such that a critical mass opposed to the system itself doesn't actually happen.